"The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded." ~ Vance Packard

Columns by Anthony Gregory

Exclusive to STR
I'm perplexed by anyone who still hates Clinton more than Bush. I've seen this in libertarian circles.
I actually didn't hate Bush right away. I didn't like him or respect him. He was the president, after all. But I didn't loathe him the way I did Clinton . So I can see why, at one point, people might have still hated Clinton more.
After 9/11, I told my friends I was glad Clinton...

The recent Supreme Court decision upholding the prerogative of local governments to steal private property for the purpose of giving it to third-party private interests, so long as those interests can generate more tax revenue or otherwise contribute more to a liberally defined notion of 'public use' than can the original owners, has drawn ire from people across the political spectrum.

Michael Savage enjoys saying that 'liberalism is a mental disorder.' He has even titled his new book with this phrase. I cannot personally agree with the statement as a generalization. Being somewhat of a Szaszian, I tend not even to believe in what are conventionally referred to as 'mental disorders.'

When I think of the Minuteman Project'the organization of Americans heroically stepping up to the plate, in the spirit of the American Revolutionaries from whom they inherit their namesake, standing on the Mexican border with shotguns and calling the federal government when they catch the migrating criminals crossing into the United States in pursuit of happiness, work and destruction of American...

Most libertarians, even anarchists, often make constitutional and jurisdictional arguments against a given un-libertarian policy. Such arguments have their place and uses. It often helps in demonstrating the illegitimacy of the system to point out particular ways that the state violates its own laws and constraints. Sometimes, listing the transgressions of a government and contrasting them with...

Two of my fellow STR writers and guest editors that I much enjoy to read, weebies and John deLaubenfels, have each come out with a column on the eternally contentious abortion issue. On first glance, one might say that weebies' article is pro-life, while John deLaubenfels' is pro-choice. These two positions might initially appear diametrically opposed and therefore entirely irreconcilable. I do...

Anarchists and libertarians are lofty people, bent on principle, stubbornly uncompromising even in the face of a real world that does not conform to such idealism. Or so we are told.
Ideas have done far more for advancing civilization, and setting it back, than these people give them credit for.

Is it just me, or does it sound like many seem to equate freedom with government, and especially government in the act of murdering people?
Freedom isn't free, say the realists, the non-na've grownups who think that the ideas of anarchy or even libertarianism are fantastic utopian dreams and nothing more.

Libertarians, and especially anarchistic libertarians, are known for their principles and strong ideology. This has often been, but does not have to be, a double-edged sword in the fight for freedom.
To be a libertarian, one must embrace the Non-aggression Principle, or at least come to the same policy conclusions as one would based on the principle. Some libertarians say they don't like the...

Nothing like the arts demolishes the case for the labor theory of value.
I am a writer and a musician. I highly value my songs, far more than most people, and infinitely more than people who haven't even heard them. What determines the value of any given song I write? It's not labor, oh no.
There have been times I've spent hours writing a relatively mediocre song. On other occasions, I have...

I have been discussing politics and economics with some left-libertarian anarchists, including STR's very own controversial writer, Bill Anderson, and have come to the conclusion that a lot of the dialogue between so-called anarcho-capitalists and so-called anarcho-socialists is muddled by semantics and arguments over nothing.

I was quite proud to be nominated for Root Striker of the Year, and joyfully surprised to win the honor.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You like me, you really like me! Or, at least a number of you like some of what I have to say.
This honor is more flattering than some of you might imagine. I am especially grateful to have been chosen when the other superbly qualified candidates ' Jim...

Sixty-three years ago, on December 7, 1941 , more than three hundred Japanese planes descended upon Pearl Harbor in a horrendous surprise attack. Or, at least it was a surprise for the American servicemen and civilians who resided at the base, some 2,400 of whom perished in the terrible onslaught.
Despite the difficulties confronted by historians and others who attempted to reveal that Franklin...

The state is a contradiction. Or, more precisely, a state that protects individual rights is an absurdity.
A state is an agency that maintains a monopoly on the use of legal force in a given geographical area. The idea that such an institution can, on balance, protect individual rights, is fallacious.
Let us think about it. In order for a state to exist, it must monopolize the 'service' it...

A recent article by Tom Nugent from National Review asserts that Bush's reelection means that 'capitalism beats socialism, once again.' After discussing Bush's commitment to tax cuts, Nugent points out that:
President Clinton didn't have a capitalist agenda for America when he came into office in 1992 . . . . In contrast, today we have a confirmed capitalist as our president and a capitalist...

George W. Bush has not been the ideal president from the point of view of an anarchist. But, in following the lead of so many libertarians who have endorsed Bush, I must put forward my reasons for supporting our president in his reelection bid.
John Kerry would be a catastrophe for this country. He would likely expand the welfare state, run huge budget deficits, strip away our civil liberties,...

'Government is a tool,' so say most people who favor it. 'It has its functions, and its limitations. It's not good for everything, but it's necessary for some things.'
I think this sums up the way, generally speaking, that most people see the government. Whether on the left or right, most non-totalitarians believe that government can do, has done, and currently does great harm, but that it is...

As an anti-state libertarian, who used to fancy himself a minarchist and, before that, a free-market conservative, I never had much use for Ralph Nader. I always considered him a paternalistic statist ' someone who saw himself as wise and prudent enough to tell us what kind of cars we should drive, with which countries we should trade, what kind of healthcare we could have, and what our...

Government schools are an atrocity. Not all government schoolteachers are evil, any more than all police officers are. But the system itself, funded through theft in the form of taxation, populated through kidnapping in the form of mandatory attendance, and serving the interests of state propaganda and social engineering, is an abomination constituting one of the very worst programs of American...

Many libertarians have become increasingly mainstream since 9/11, shrugging off or outright defending numerous policies of the Bush administration ' including, in my opinion, its very worst ' and celebrating wildly every time Bush advances his phony 'privatization' schemes or mentions that he once sent us each a check for three hundred dollars of our own money the government had stolen (properly...

Some readers assume that since I live in Berkeley , I look kind of like a hippie in some of my photos, and I hate war more than anything else the government does, I'm some kind of pacifist ' or, much worse, that I support the very non-pacifistic act of gun control, or, more accurately, victim disarmament.
No. I'm a libertarian, I believe in self-defense, and gun control is the stuff of tyranny...

Aside from national defense, most limited-government libertarians say that the only legitimate function of government, in a free society, is the criminal justice system ' the police, courts, and prisons.
To me, this system seems like one of the first ones we should scrap! Libertarians generally understand that the importance of a service does not mean it should be provided by the state. We...

Let's pretend for a moment that governments on all levels vanished instantly. What would happen?
Well, if the governments had vanished because people embraced the ideals of liberty, property, peace, and non-aggression, I honestly think that within a couple decades, poverty as we know it would be gone from most of the earth, warfare would nearly go extinct, and voluntary cooperation and the free...

Monday, August 9, 2004 is the 59th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki .
Nagasaki is often forgotten. People frequently refer to Hiroshima (and Nagasaki ).
At least 75,000 innocents were killed, instantaneously, 59 years ago.
But Nagasaki shows, as well as anything else, the essence of our government at work. Having utterly destroyed Hiroshima with the debut of the single most potent weapon...

Democrats just love talking about how we need regime change in this country. What they're implying is that Bush needs to lose the election and Kerry needs to win. And then, thinks the average liberal, America will return to normalcy.
Few people detest the current administration more than I do, except maybe the people who actually lost family members to his wars, or the presumed 'enemy...

If anarchism means anything, it is a rejection of the state, meaning, a rejection of an institution claiming and maintaining a monopoly on violence.
Of course, anarchists find themselves in the real world, in which such monopolies clearly exist. Some of the things states do we might even approve of, at least circumstantially. If an anarchist is being mugged, and a police officer comes by to stop...

One of the most important things that individualists can do in speaking with statists of various types is use a terminology that elicits cognitive dissonance, making them realize the errors and inconsistencies in their thinking.
Very few Americans are 100% statist. Most of them have some political opinions on which they are fairly libertarian, even anarchistic. They will often have positions...

I don't like the drug issue. For years, I felt it typified the outrageousness of a government gone berserk, so I made it a point to discuss the Drug War frequently. After 9/11, I came to think that the less metaphorical War on Terrorism deserved the majority of my scrutiny. I started believing that the bombing of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq warranted more attention than the prohibitions...

The U.S. bombing of a wedding party in Iraq on Wednesday in which more than 40 civilians lost their lives falls nicely in line with the rest of the Bush administration's War on Terrorism. Military officials now deny the dead were civilians, but let's assume for the sake of argument that they were. The affair reminds me of the U.S. bombing of a wedding party in Afghanistan about two years ago,...

After writing a piece for Antiwar.com about the mysteries surrounding Nick Berg's murder, I received a full mailbox of e-mails pointing out that I only scratched the surface, and that I did not give due attention to the more daring conspiracy theories widely contemplated in the weblog universe. I didn't much discuss the footage of his murder itself, raising questions about how one of the killers...

The greatest tragedy in our culture is the widely accepted lie that the wars in U.S. history, since after the American Revolution, have been necessary, proper and even glorious. And this lie has been swallowed, parroted, and perpetuated by many of those who call themselves conservatives, liberals, progressives, socialists, constitutionalists, 'libertarians' and even 'anarchists'--all to the fatal...

The gruesome beheading of Nick Berg has given the War Party all they need to overcome the heat of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The hawks who unconvincingly told us that the Abu Ghraib photos revealed abusive behavior that was neither characteristic of the treatment of Iraqi prisoners, nor even particularly tortuous, now have something more superficially substantial to point to. Sure, U.S....

For several years I championed minarchy. Even before I learned the term, I embraced the notion that a limited government, which protected individuals from force and fraud, but stays within the limits of that function, would best serve society.
I understood that the government should not do at least 90% of what it did. I opposed conscription, drug laws, business regulations, welfare programs,...

I have a confession to make. I like the American flag, though I do not consider it sacred. It took me a long time to regard it this way.
I'm an Eagle Scout, and very proud of that accomplishment. As a scout, I learned to fold the flag respectfully, and never let it touch the ground.
While I still have a general respect for the flag, I have lost all respect for the Pledge of Allegiance...

I think of all the Americans having trouble finding work, and I can't help but remember the many times I've heard the saying, 'In America , you can be anything you want.' This cheery proverb was often followed by something like: 'You can be a police officer, a prosecutor, or even the president of the United States .'
Realistically, not everyone can become president of the United States . This...

It is no coincidence that government schools and income taxation are two of the modern statist's favorite American political institutions as well as two of the most inherently criminal.
Also not a coincidence, perhaps, is the fact that the end of the school year comes about a month within April 15, which is the day of reckoning for the American citizen who has spent the 365 days since the last...

We have all heard the mantra that we owe it to society to follow its rules ' usually meaning, the government's laws ' because of a 'social contract,' which binds us together in peaceful and manageable coexistence, without which our culture would be a chaotic anarchy.
Many libertarians have long argued that we do not need any vague 'social contract'; an explicit one already exists: the U.S....

Note: I went to Washington DC a few years back, only to find that the National Archives, the only site I really wanted to see there, were closed for the next two years. I wondered at the time if the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights would still be there when the building reopened.
A bit upset, I went to the Lincoln Memorial, instead, and wrote this poem.
I came to DC to see the...

Libertarians, and especially anarchistic libertarians, are known for their principles and strong ideology. This has often been, but does not have to be, a double-edged sword in the fight for freedom.
To be a libertarian, one must embrace the Non-aggression Principle, or at least come to the same policy conclusions as one would based on the principle. Some libertarians say they don't like the...

If anarchism means anything, it is a rejection of the state, meaning, a rejection of an institution claiming and maintaining a monopoly on violence.
Of course, anarchists find themselves in the real world, in which such monopolies clearly exist. Some of the things states do we might even approve of, at least circumstantially. If an anarchist is being mugged, and a police officer comes by to stop...

The greatest tragedy in our culture is the widely accepted lie that the wars in U.S. history, since after the American Revolution, have been necessary, proper and even glorious. And this lie has been swallowed, parroted, and perpetuated by many of those who call themselves conservatives, liberals, progressives, socialists, constitutionalists, 'libertarians' and even 'anarchists'--all to the fatal...

Two of my fellow STR writers and guest editors that I much enjoy to read, weebies and John deLaubenfels, have each come out with a column on the eternally contentious abortion issue. On first glance, one might say that weebies' article is pro-life, while John deLaubenfels' is pro-choice. These two positions might initially appear diametrically opposed and therefore entirely irreconcilable. I do...

It is no coincidence that government schools and income taxation are two of the modern statist's favorite American political institutions as well as two of the most inherently criminal.
Also not a coincidence, perhaps, is the fact that the end of the school year comes about a month within April 15, which is the day of reckoning for the American citizen who has spent the 365 days since the last...